Caroline: Little House, Revisited(65)
“What are the words, Pa?” Mary asked.
The bow gave a little squawk, and Charles colored ever so slightly. “Well, you know, I don’t seem to remember any more than the tune,” he said quickly.
Caroline knew from his grimace that the words were not fit for mixed company. That in itself was no great shock. She could imagine Charles and Edwards indulging in the occasional oath or bawdy song, just as there were things women would speak of only if there were no men within earshot.
Caroline rested her folded arms across the shelf of her belly. There, she thought. That was what she had been missing while Charles was away. Not her husband’s company, but the chance to share her own. The girls had their games and giggles, the men their brash hijinks. Caroline had only herself.
Before the roof, before the floor, came the fireplace. Charles might have dug himself a well first and saved himself hauling water from the creek to mix the mud for plastering between the chimney stones. Instead he built the chimney and hearth, so she would not have to tussle with the elements to keep her cookfire going. That was the sort of husband Charles Ingalls was.
Caroline sat in the shade of the north wall, turning scraps of red calico into curtain ties and watching Charles stack the chimney stones while the child tumbled lazily beneath her ribs. It seemed to have discovered its limbs, its movements more purposeful now, more akin to a spoon stirring a pot than the tentative winglike flutters of the past several weeks. The straighter she held her back, the more room it gave the both of them, but her muscles were tired of bracing her spine like a ramrod all day long. Her corset helped only so much. The straw tick, with nothing but the dirt floor beneath it, did not help at all.
Truth be told, what Caroline wanted most in that house was a chair. Not an upturned crate or log to perch on, but a true chair, with a back and arms. She would cook outside all summer long, if only there were a chair to ease her weary back after supper. Her mind strayed to her rocker, and she smiled wistfully. But Charles, in his thoughtfulness, was building her a fireplace—and fairly wearing himself out in his hurry to please her, lifting stones and hauling water and clay for mud.
He stood back, smearing the sweat from his forehead into his hair and setting it all askew.
“You look like a wild man, Charles,” she teased. “You’re standing your hair all on end.”
“It stands on end anyway, Caroline,” he said, flopping down flat on his back beside her. “When I was courting you, it never would lie down, no matter how much I slicked it with bear grease.”
He had tried, she remembered, valiantly. The slightest whiff of rosemary swept her back to their courtship, when every doff of his hat had filled the room with the smell of that herb-scented grease. Caroline combed her fingers through the unruly brown mass, remembering how her younger brother and sister used to hold their noses and tease, Is Rosemary Ingalls coming to call? “You’ve done well to build that chimney up so high, all by yourself,” she praised him, twiddling a lock between her fingers.
His forehead shifted beneath her palm as he lifted his eyebrows to smile up at her. Just for a moment, Caroline let herself conjure a picture of the pleasurable diversions they might take, right here on the quilt, if there were not two little girls romping in the grass nearby. A sweet, warm current coursed through her at the thought. Caroline closed her eyes and turned her face to the breeze, letting the soft wind whisk it from her.
All of them waited before the new mantel shelf while Caroline went to her trunk and lifted the lid. Beneath the brown paper bundle that was her delaine, nested snugly between the good pillows, sat the cardboard box she had packed most carefully of all. She burrowed one hand deep into its center of crumpled newsprint until her fingertips brushed something cool and smooth. Please, Caroline prayed. If it were not in one piece—Caroline blinked away the thought. She would not cry over such a thing, not with Charles and the girls looking on. Gently she pressed the paper wrapping back, hollowing out a path until a glint of golden china hair peeped out. Once again Caroline tunneled down, wrapping her fingers protectively around the narrow china neck and waist. Up through the rustling papers, all in one piece, came her china shepherdess.
Caroline’s heart gave a happy lurch. No matter that the painted lips could not speak, nor the tiny molded hands return the warm embrace of Caroline’s palm. She was so bright and beautiful, so small and delicate, Caroline had never been able to get enough of looking at her. She flushed a little, feeling Charles and the girls watching. Here she was a grown woman with two dear girls of her own, and still she had as much affection for that china lady as Mary did for her rag doll.
Caroline wiped the dainty figure carefully with an apron corner, half cleaning, half caressing the smooth porcelain, then stood the china shepherdess right in the center of the mantel shelf, where she belonged.
Two words settled themselves comfortably in her mind: Welcome home.
Eighteen
If Charles brought home a prairie chicken, Caroline decided, she would lay a hot fire in the hearth and fry it up crisp and brown. She hummed softly to herself, half waltzing to the tune as she swept. The logs of the puncheon floor lay with their pale yellow hearts turned up to her. She almost hated to walk across them, they were so flat and new and even. But, oh, the sound of her heels on that thick floor. The swish of the willow-bough broom.
She leaned a moment on the broom handle, reveling in the shade of the new slab roof. Caroline missed the glow of the canvas as she’d known she would, but it was a welcome relief to have a place away, to close herself off entirely from wind and sun. That endless wind made her aware of every inch of her skin. It was too much, being touched so constantly. Once more Caroline gazed up at that good solid ceiling, silently thanking Mr. Edwards for the half keg of nails he had loaned so that Charles need not whittle pegs to secure the slabs to the beams. There had not been occasion before to consider the particular virtue of each fragment of a house. Apart from the occasional lashing of rain that made her fear for the shingles, their house had been a house, and she was thankful for it. Now Caroline harbored a separate admiration for the shutters, the hearth, even the chinking between the logs.